Travel Photography:
News Archives

Friday, 16th October, 2009

I have posted and will be maintaining a page for announcements about photography
competitions - as much to remind myself as everybody else! Hopefully, this
will make it easy for everyone to keep up to date with the latest competitions.

Culture and Customs of Laos

This intriguing new book about Thailand's neighbour was released in May 2008
and contains three photos licensed from me. If you want to know more about
licensing photos then please read my licensing FAQ's,
and contact
me for more
information.

Garden Photographer of The Year 2008 Entries
for the Garden Photographer of The Year photo competition close on January
31st. A late call, but with over £25,000 worth of prizes, it's got to
be worth a late rummage through your files, and a note in your diary
to enter this competition next year! You must register and images must
be uploaded to the site to enter the competition.

Saturday, 3rd November, 2007

UNESCO World
Heritage Sites

The UNESCO list of
851 world heritage sites is now available on stickyrice.co.uk.
How many have you visited?! The locations are presented in a easy-to-read
and attractive way over a series of seventeen pages (50 sites per page)
. Please bear in mind that each page pulls a large amount of information
from external sources, so the pages may take a second or two to load.
Enjoy...

The most popular photos are now available as Art Prints. Printed to
A4 size suitable for mounting (matting), and framing in a standard 30cm
x 40cm or 16" x 12" frame. Selected pictures are available
for dispatch as gifts.

Thursday, 4th October, 2007

BBC Worldwide buys major stake in Lonely Planet

On September 30th, BBC
Worldwide announced that it had purchased Lonely Planet. Their
75% ownership leaves original founders, husband and wife team Tony
and Maureen Wheeler, a 25% share in the company. Lonely
Planet put news of the takeover on their blog.

Wednesday, 3rd October, 2007

Travel Photographer of the Year 2007

Entries for this increasingly popular competition are now closed. If,
like me, you have entered the competition and have your entry postmarked
October 3rd, then you are now reliant upon Royal Mail. Fear not, though;
the organisers of the competition have made allowances for disruption
in mail services caused by the strikes, and your entry postmarked with
today's date is guaranteed entry.

Lack of organisation means I have only entered for the One Shot category
with the following two images: Special
Places and Amazing
Faces.

More Epson Woes

I thought that it would be a good idea to update my drivers for my Epson
RX640 All-in-One Printer/Scanner. I'm not quite sure why I
thought that this would be a good idea, or what benefits it might bring
me, I just did. Anyhow, while the drivers for the printer side of things
seem to be working just fine, the scanner now seems to ignore that there
is actually anything at all on the flatbed, and will print out a very
nice A4 page of black. (The new printer driver over-rode my previous
preference settings of an automatic print preview of each file prior
to printing, so this came as an unpleasant surprise, and waste of - expensive
- ink the first time round).

As I tend to update just about everything on a bi-daily basis and can't
seem to roll back the drivers, it looks like it's a System Restore job,
followed by re-installation of the other updates I've performed since.
Ho-hum. Why can't all drivers be found, installed (and work) with the
ease of Nvidia's?

Update 14th November: turned out that my driver problems
were just a conflict, and nothing at all to do with Epson (shame-faced
apologies...)

Saturday, 8th September, 2007

Sticky Rice Travel Photography RSS Feed now at Feedburner

RSS Feed now available on Sticky Rice Travel
Photography

I have put up a feed for the latest 25 photos to be uploaded on this
site. The feed will link directly to the large version of the image on
the server. The feed is available here. Update
9th September: My Travel
Photography Feed now moved to Feedburner.

Tuesday, 14th August, 2007

Phnom Bakheng, Angkor Wat at risk of collapse

Representatives of the World Monuments Fund (WMF), say that Phnom Bakheng,
the popular spot for taking photos of the sunset at Angkor
Wat is at risk of collapse because of rapidly increasing visitor
numbers.

Nasa satellites reveal true scale of Angkor Wat

A map, published in the journal PNAS,
extends the known settlement by 1000 sq km, about the size of Los Angeles
- a third larger than previously thought. The map was produced from
ground surveys, airborne photography, and ground-sensing radar from Nasa's AIRSAR satellite. Read
more on BBC World News...

Saturday, 4th August, 2007

BBC Photographer of the Year 2007

Sadly, this contest has
been suspended just as the second round was being voted upon. It's a
shame that such a great fuss has been made, and that things couldn't
have been resolved more cleanly and quickly in this fracas
over competitions invloving many media companies and corporations,
not just the BBC.

I had missed out on the first round, (I forgot that it had started!),
and was looking forward to the judging on the second round, which I had
entered. How long it will will take to resolve this mess is uncertain,
but let's just hope that they can do it with the least amount of corporate
nonsense (endless meetings, consultations, and reports), so that we can
all get back to enjoying ourselves as soon as possible.

I still can't believe that Angkor Wat fialed to make the final seven,
and Christ Redeemer did. I guess that national voting had a lot to do
with the results, spurred on by Tourist Authority interests and encouragement.
Just call me a cynic!

Monday, 9th July, 2007

Epson RX640 Review - one year on

I bought this model in July 2006 having previously owned one of the forerunners
- the RX500. They both perform very well as all-rounders. I have used the RX640
for most of the 35mm scanning for this site, and a lot of general printing,
and it has not let me down - yet. The printer is fast and produces photo prints
of very good quality for a machine of this price. The scanner too, is very
good, though if you are thinking of scanning a large number of slides/negatives
at high resolution for archiving/printing at 300dpi, then I would seriously
think about investing in a stand-alone scanner for a bit more money.

Sadly, I fully expect it to let
me down - as did the RX500. In common with other printers, Epson printers/all-in-ones
have an overflow system whereby excess ink is drained into a 'reservoir' every
time the heads are cleaned. Should you use generic (unbranded) inks then head
cleaning is likely to be required far more often and the reservoir will fill
up far more quickly. Once this tank is full, some printers allow you the facility
to empty/replace the tank - not so Epson. In fact, there is a built-in program
which will actually prevent you from using the printer AT ALL once the reservoir
is full. An 'error' will occur, which is irreversible within the Epson software.
A useless error will generate which gives you no useful information about the
supposed fault. Referring to the Epson Website, you will learn that your machine
has come to the end of it's working life - according to Epson. Supposedly,
this is in order to prevent the ink from flowing all over your desktop, yet
the printers could be made such that the reservoir could be emptied and cleaned,
or simply replaced, easily.

A lot of searching on the Web (especially within
photographic forums, where the Epson name is highly regarded, and with good
reason, for their affordable scanning and printing capabilities), and you will
find that the only way to override the in-built software "error" which
prevents you using the printer is to download and install a (free) Russian-coded
utility, from a third-party Website.

UPDATE 23rd July 2007: The website is no more. The utility
is still available via the Web Archive, however, on this page: SSC
Service Utility for Epson Stylus Printers. Scroll down to the very bottom
of the page, and you will see a link to the utility.

With thanks to Herbert Strohbach for the update on the dead
link.

UPDATE 9th September 2007: Russian SSCLG Website for the
SSC utility once again online.

This
sounds very dodgy, I know, but it apparently works very well and doesn't involve
sneaky installation of any Spyware or trojans or anything nasty like that:
use at your own risk though. This will enable you to use the printer once again
- but with the risk that everything will eventually get covered in ink once
the reservoir eventually overflows.

Sooo...presuming that the machine is out
of warranty, (my RX500 was by a month or two), you have to get your hands dirty.
More in-depth Web searching and you can find scanned copies
of the Epson engineers manuals, which will tell you how to take these machines apart. Although some
users will tell you that this is easier than it looks and can save you a lot
of money - beware! Unless you are the type who has the sort of skills and patience
required to take apart engines, coupled with the hands of concert pianist,
and the eyesight of a surgeon, then I would personally recommend against it.
I have none of these skills or abilities, and I tried and failed. It took me
a morning to take the
RX500 apart, then three mornings trying to put it back
together again - which was never 100% successful! Result: a trashed all-in-one
after approx. 14 months use. A stand-alone printer is apparently far easier
to take apart - but I can't see me ever trying it!

Ultimately, the answer is
to only use Epson inks, which will require far less head cleaning, (usually
only when you install new cartridges). Even so, a lot of printing will eventually
result in the reservoir filling up anyway.

After a lot of soul-searching, I
decided to buy Epson again. Why? Firstly, it was my decision to buy and use
generic inks, the money saved was considerable, and could be written off against
the cost of a new all-in-one. Secondly, although I am (still) annoyed at the
policy of what appears to be in-built redundancy by Epson; actively preventing
use of a perfectly good machine well before the end of it's usable life, I
can to some extent understand that this is perhaps in part in order to keep
down the design and support costs of the machines: they wouldn't be so cheap
in the first place, if they were designed to last forever. Lastly, the technology
in this field advances at leaps and bounds, and what you can get six months
down the line for half the price, is way better than what you have today, (presuming
you need and want the improvements, of course).

In short: an excellent machine
at a budget price for the facilities offered - but only use branded inks. If
you do a lot of printing, it will eventually fail anyway, but it's probably
worth it for the quality you get.

Despite my many years of travelling, I find that I have only visited
six of the twenty-one finalists. Familiarity with some of the others
still only gives me a list of 15 from which to choose. That made the
task a little easier, as you get to vote for the seven. The Taj Mahal
and Angkor were among my personal favourites.

Voting for the New Seven Wonders of the World closes at midnight on
July 6th. The New 7 Wonders of the World will be announced during the
Official Declaration ceremony in Lisbon, Portugal on Saturday, July 7th,
2007

As the Eagles sang in 'The Last Resort':
"...you call someplace paradise; kiss it goodbye". It is true
though - it's a gorgeous place, and certainly one of my favourite travel
destinations. You can't keep places like this quiet.

As for the other results; well I agree wholeheartedly with the top countries
list, but have to admit to being a little suspicious of the top websites
list. Three of the top five websites are tour operators. Are they really
the best places to find good unbiased information? Call me cynical...

Adobe Creative Suite 3 announced

Release dates and options for the new Adobe CS3 are to be announced
on March 27th in a webcast live from New York at 3:30 pm EST. They have
already made clear that Photoshop will be released in two new editions: Photoshop
CS3 and Photoshop CS3 Extended.

Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Released

Now available at Amazon UK: Adobe
Photoshop Lightroom for PC/Mac. This has to be the best new photo-imaging
software release in a long time. All photo professionals and enthusiasts
should have already tried and tested this essential addition to their
kit, and not found it wanting: a very impressive piece of software.

While not a replacement for Photoshop, it is a valuable management tool:
combining importing, management, developing, printing and presentation
features. It certainly has to be considered as possibly the standard
image management tool for all (digital) photographers.

Non-destructive editing; support for more than 140 camera raw formats;
excellent editing tools, (the usability of the curves tool is much improved
on Photoshop); web gallery creation and print layouts: there are many
excellent features in this new release.

UK Pricing and release dates - updated 28th
March 2007

Available in the USA from February 19th. Initially planned to be released
in the UK on February 23rd 2007, Amazon UK released Lightroom on March
15th. It is available at a discount
price if ordered before April 30, 2007. Expected retail in
the UK after this date is expected to be £175+VAT (£205.63).. Photoshop
Lightroom is available now at Amazon UK (prices vary - see box at
left for current price) or directly from Adobe for £146.88 (or £151.25
as a download).